Sad day today, Tony has had to cancel the rest of his tour and head for home as one of his nearest friends is gravely ill. We’re sitting in Riga, the capital of Latvia – wonderful town, but quite tricky for him to work out how to get the bike back to the UK so […]

Hi All, We are sitting in a gorgeous town Vijandi in Estonia, It seems like Arrowtown, lovely old oak trees and cobbled streets. A big room cost $50 NZ. Today a few of us went for a ride in a “bog” National Park. Really high water table and lots of flooding, deep moss under the […]

Today we had a rest day. That means we still get on our motorbikes – but rather than go from A to B, we leave from A, have an excursion and come back to A. These are the days that can be really treasured on a long journey like this. There is no compulsion, you […]

We made a good choice when we heard about the traffic and time to take bikes to central accommodation and selected a hotel on the outskirts. It still took an hour to do the last 25 km. Bikes parked under the watchful eye of “muscle bound” Mr Security. The hotel prices here are huge, but […]

Riding south toward St Petersburg we have come abreast of Lake Ladoga, famous as the escape for 1.3 million during the Nazi’s siege of Leningrad (as it was named then) in WW2. When the winter comes and it freezes around here, the lake freezes as well and this provided the ice road route out of […]

You’d think Tony would be celebrating his research into the price of petrol, which has revealed that here in Russia it’s the cheapest yet. But as the photo shows this hasn’t stopped him getting down on his knees and begging the station attendants to give him a discount as he has spent all his money […]

Time for an update on the gas pricing.  Russia has moved in to the number one spot with 95 being the cheapest so far. In fact it is 41% cheaper than NZ fuel. Here is how it stacks up so far.  Petrol 95 Octane Country Cost per litre Equivalent NZD per Litre % more Expensive than […]

In most respects Northern Russia has been forgotten by post-perestroika Moscow – the locals are in a 1930’s time warp, bartering carrots for bread, and earning a little cash where they can. Their houses are still owned by the State, so there’s no maintenance and yet no housing construction is happening either – no private […]

The ancient trolleys cruise along with the more modern ones in Murmansk. This surely must be the most Northern trolley route in the world. 10 rubles each (about 50cents) to the conductor got Gareth and me a ride to the terminal of route 3 and towards the end in the residential streets our teeth were […]

Today we made our way from Ivalo in Finland 50 km’s east across the Russian and Finish border.   As we exited Finland one of the officials asked why we were going there and stated the only 60,000 people crossed the border per year and 70% of them were Russian, 29% made up another group and […]